Letter: County swept clean; City needs the same

Letter: County swept clean; City needs the same



David Brian Wallace
St. Augustine
Publication Date: 09/14/06


Editor: Hallelujah! Voters agree: developers are ruining our quality of life. Majorities support protecting and preserving Paradise.

Primary voters defeated two Republican County Commissioners, denying reelection to Bruce Maguire, who spent $16.10/vote (defeated by Tom Manuel, who spent $0.92/vote) and Karen Stern, who spent $25.70/vote (defeated by Ronald Sanchez, who spent $0.91/vote).

In righteous wrath, real people spoke louder than developers' moneybags.

Reverberations are continuing. Real reforms require real reformers.

That's why I support Democrat Ken Bryan against Sanchez on Nov. 7. A Justice Department retiree and upholsterer-businessman, Ken does not cower to power. He will represent all the people and stand up to lawbreakers (like Ashland's polluting SR 207 asphalt plant).

Ugliness/waste will metastasize until citizens are heard and heeded. Our small city proposes a $50 million budget and 21 percent general fund increase, without web-posting spending information.

City Commissioner Donald Crichlow typifies the caste of cold, chauvinistic, condescending corporation-coddling incumbents. He's an architect for developers (representing clients before HARB). On Sept. 2, Crichlow (claiming 1599 ancestry) publicly played Governor Pedro Menendez.

Crichlow once compared gays to birds/dogs (referring to Menendez's 1566 order to murder a gay man for being a "Sodomite and a Lutheran," mocking legal efforts to fly Rainbow flags on our Bridge of Lions).(5/31/2005 Folio). Bigotry?

On Sept. 2, what the city Web site calls "our royalty" bestowed 400 pieces of cake.

As Marie Antoinette said, "Let ëem eat cake."

City Commissioners and developers are not "royalty." Hold them accountable.

Who destroys nature and pollutes our environment, tolerates waste, records withholding, cronyism and rubberstamp-approval of large, ugly projects/buildings? Five incumbent St. Augustine commissioners.

Time to vote to recall them for misfeasance/malfeasance (illegal dumping of illegal Riberia Street city dumps' contents into the Old City Reservoir; First Amendment and Sunshine violations, waste and junkets)?

Keep on voting.


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